Grammy Time

Year in, year out, the complaint is always the same: How have the Grammy Awards endured for so long while bearing so little relevance to what actually goes on in the music business?

The Grammys haven`t simply endured. The televised ceremony (at 8 p.m. Wednesday on CBS) is the champion of all music award shows despite upstart competition from MTV`s Music Video Awards, The Billboard Awards, The Soul Train Awards and Dick Clark`s sturdy American Music Awards.

Despite its elite historical status alongside the Oscars, Tonys and Emmys, detractors say the Grammy show is simply a shameless reflection of who has sold the most records during a given year. Grammy voters -- more than 7,000 members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences -- disagree. They say big chart numbers and sales victories don`t sway them.

But how else to explain eight nods for the now-safe and homogenized work of Phil Collins, or five honoring the negligible musical talent of pop-rapper MC Hammer? Both received nominations for Album and Record of the year -- the show`s prestige categories.

The Album classification in particular is traditionally reserved for more ambitious recordings. Yet this year, Hammer and Collins share the honors with merely likable newcomers Wilson Phillips and Mariah Carey, along with industry veteran Quincy Jones.

Overlooked: Midnight Oil, Billy Joel, INXS, Living Colour, Sinead O`Connor, Madonna, James Ingram, Neil Young, The Vaughn Brothers, Eric Clapton, Basia, The Time and Prince -- any one of whom would have made a more worthy album nominee.

The Grammy, which is awarded for excellence in audio recording -- not videos, concerts or fashion sense -- somehow seems out of place in the hands of a guy like Hammer. Though he may be a deft entertainer, that`s beside the point.

Still, these are the same voters who handed the Best New Artist trophy to Milli Vanilli last year. And though it wasn`t known that Milli Vanilli didn`t sing on its album at the time of last year`s awards, it was widely known within the industry that the guys were selected more for their chic video form than anything else.

``Music excellence can be many things,`` says Mike Greene, the Academy`s president and the Grammys` biggest cheerleader. ``Making a profound social statement or saying something provocative -- well, you and I may believe that`s important, but other people may vote for pure entertainment.``

Greene is familiar with the criticism lobbed at the ceremonies each year. Milli Vanilli isn`t the only debacle he has had to explain. That`s why he doesn`t flinch when pressed about such blunders as:

-- The 1987 Best New Artist honor bestowed on singer Jodi Watley, who had been recording for more than seven years with the R&B band Shalamar.

-- The five statues awarded to Christopher Cross in 1980.

-- The continual celebration of milquetoast ballads in prime categories, and failure with ``hip`` classifications such as metal and rap that simply showcase voter ignorance.

``I have to look across all 79 categories for more of a pluralistic view of what we`re doing as an organization,`` Greene says. ``The preponderance of recordings honored are very worthy.``

It is precisely those 79 categories that give the Grammys much of their allure. More than just a salute to what`s hot in the dominant pop and rock forms, the Grammy telecast is the only award show to fete classical, opera, country, bluegrass, folk, gospel, spoken word, jazz and other styles all in one night.

The sheer scope makes for an upper crust -- if unwieldy -- TV show that may in the future be halved over two consecutive nights on CBS if Greene gets his way.

The expanse of categories also makes for a complicated voting process. One safeguard, says Greene, is that academy members (all musicians, writers or producers) vote only in their field of expertise.

But ``everyone votes for the big four,`` Green says. That accounts for the safe, familiar names and commercial stars in lead categories: Album, Record, Song and New Artist.

And even though voters stick to their area of prime interest, such as jazz or country, fluke nominations still occur.

Last year, for example, singer-songwriter Harry Connick Jr. released two albums: a jazz outing called Lofty`s Roach Souffle and a pop set called We Are In Love. He did this specifically to separate his jazz and pop identities.

Yet Grammy voters didn`t see it that way. Souffle was ignored, but the pop outing did get one nod -- in a jazz category.

Greene explains it this way: ``What the record industry says is pop or jazz has nothing to do with how we categorize the music. We really don`t care where something is commercially targeted.

``Whitney Houston was hoping that I`m Your Baby Tonight would end up in an R& B category and Janet Jackson was hoping for pop. It came out the other way because they can`t dictate. It`s what the music says to the voters that matters.``